Vacations & Miffed Prophets
by Tom and April Hoopes in Faith on Saturday, July 04, 2009 6:00 AM
(Tom and April Hoopes are co-editorial directors of Faith and Family magazine. In this weekly column, they share family-friendly ways of observing the liturgical year and celebrating the Sunday readings.)
Vacation
Pope Benedict will spend two weeks in July vacationing in the Italian Alps at Les Combes, in the same cabin that he used for vacations in 2005 and 2006.
We’ll be celebrating these two Sundays on the road in a mega vacation that will bring us to Minnesota and the home of Tim Drake, as well as to Mount Rushmore and beyond.
We will try to remember Benedict’s vacation advice from a recent general audience: “We must set aside time in life for God, to open our life to God with a thought, a meditation, a small prayer and not to forget Sunday is the day of the Lord.”
July 5 Readings
Ezekiel 2:2-5; Psalm 123:1-4; 2 Corinthians 12:7-10; Mark 6:1-6
Our Take
In today’s Gospel, Jesus has a tough time preaching in his home town of Nazareth. After all, his audience knows his parents, his cousins (cousins are called “brothers and sisters” here and a few other places in the Bible) and saw him grow up and learn a trade.
“A prophet is not without honor,” says Jesus, “except in his native place and among his own kin and in his own house.”
On the one hand, those words can be a comfort to us. If we’ve found a positive religious path in life, our family might know us too well and not buy it. We can rest easy knowing the same was true for Christ.
On the other hand, these words can be used as a bad excuse for complacent, self-righteous self-pity. We can decide that they exempt us from having to reach out to our family. We can fancy ourselves persecuted prophets.
We humbly submit a third way to understand his words: They aren’t about how to feel about yourself, but how to feel about your family. One’s family provides a special obstacle to evangelization. One should find a way to evangelize them anyway.
After all, look at the first reading. In it, Ezekiel is sent explicitly to reach out to a “rebellious house.” And in the Gospel, Christ didn’t neglect giving evangelization at home a try. The Gospel even shows what approach he took with those at home: He cured a few people who were sick and was willing to speak about spiritual things.
We can do the same: Do good things at home, and speak naturally about your faith, when it comes up. It won’t be easy. But you also don’t get a pass just because it’s tough.
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